What's history for?

In this Asia Foundation piece on teaching history in Viet Nam, I was struck by this quote from historian Pham Quoc Su: “It is time to throw away the old way of thinking about history as simply about galvanizing national pride … because history also contains the history of the world, because it must speak of the bitter truths that should not be studied but from which lessons must be drawn for future generations, or truths that have been buried which now must be recovered”.

At primary school in the British Isles, I was taught that Francis Drake was a hero. I later learnt from Spanish students many very different epithets... In Southeast Asia, too, in recent years, the “historically dubious”, the “poison” lurking in some of the history textbooks, has proved politically costly. The region more than ever needs the contextualizing influence of history – but the focus needs to be on what unites, rather than on what divides.